Local Volunteers Create a Yearlong Well-Being Program to Aid With Health Worker Retention

Prior to 2020, the turnover rate at Cortez’s Southwest Health System (SWS)—one of the largest employers in the country—was less than 20 percent. Since then, it’s regularly registered over that, sometimes as high as 25 percent. One of the reasons, according to healthcare workers, is burnout, exhaustion, and impact of aggression in the job arena. Not content to see the trend continue, a volunteer employee health committee at SWS devised a program to provide monthly activities designed to improve the resilience and well-being of healthcare workers. Those activities, which are open to the community at large, might include things like nutrition classes, cooking demos, 5K training, mental health seminars, sip and paint activities, and more. SWS staff can acquire tokens by participating in well-being activities, and those tokens can be redeemed for Cortez Cash, thus helping promote the economic health of Cortez, too. LOR’s funding will help support incentives, training, marketing materials, and event supplies.

This project is fiscally sponsored by Onward! A Legacy Foundation.